By Abdul Jawad Saleh
Printed In Challenge, February 1995
Palestine has always constituted a single geographical, political and demographic unit with Greater Syria and Egypt. On its soil the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt intermingled. Palestine also witnessed, as a land bridge linking Asia, Africa, and Europe, several movements and waves of conquerors who dominated it for different periods of time and left behind varying degrees of influence. The indigenous population, however, always managed to defeat the conquerors and regain its freedom.
The Arab character was the main, if not the only one to persist. It survived within the context of a particular cultural, linguistic and historical civilization as well as in social customs. The inhabitants of this geographical area known as "Palestine," through their continuous existence on this land, have kept certain cultural characteristics which, together with their very existence on that land, have never been threatened throughout history as they are threatened now by Zionism.
Palestine witnessed several colonial invasions. These took various forms to hide imperialist intentions based on economic and strategic interests, chief among which was religion exemplified by the Crusades. Thus came the international colonialist movement in the late nineteenth century which, in order to solve the "Oriental Problem," aimed at cutting up and dividing the Ottoman Empire among the world's imperialist powers. The British, French and German secret services worked eagerly to advance their own imperialist interests by encouraging Jews living in their own communities to return to the so-called "promised land," Palestine. Due to its geographical importance, controlling Palestine gave control over the heart of the Arab World and was the cross-roads of both the Old and New Worlds.
This explains the motives behind Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt and Syria at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the struggle between Britain, France and Germany to get the lion's share of the sick man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire. The fact that the onset of serious Jewish settlement in Palestine in 1882 coincided with the occupation of Egypt by Britain and of Tunisia by France in the same year, points out the cooperation and link between the Zionist colonial settlement and the international colonialist movement. Furthermore, the establishment of a Jewish homeland would sever the link, and break the unity of the body of the Arab World in Africa with Arabs in Asia, due to this homeland's position at the heart of the Afro-Asian land. This also enables the Zionist base to direct the struggle against Arab liberation movements and achieve control over international communication routes and the resources of the region.
The area of Palestine is a mere 26,326 square kilometers, of which 48% is desert and 30.9% a very steep mountainous area. Consequently, this cannot economically be the motive for Jewish settlement, but rather could form a good basis for starting out and then expanding all around like a military outpost on which imperialism could forever depend; it would assume the role of policeman in the area, hitting Arab national movements hard, eradicating them, and subjugating the Arab countries to the military, economic and political control of Israel and imperialism.
This imperialist role is given more credence by the fact that the leaders of the Zionist movement first thought of settling in areas such as Argentina, Cyprus , the Sinai Peninsula, Uganda, the Arabian Gulf and Libya, before finally deciding on Palestine, which belies the pretence that Zionism is a national liberation movement for Jews. It is inconceivable for a true national and popular liberation movement not to have a previously established link with a well known and defined homeland.
Israel, as Herzel hailed it in his book "Old Land-New Land," extends to the Euphrates and includes Beirut and the Lebanese mountains. In a document published in 1917 by the Youth Movement of the American Zionist Organization, to which a map was attached and which was designed to introduce Israel, is stated: "There in our own land, we the Hebrews of long standing and you the Hebrews to come, will untidily lay our hands on every spot that once belonged to us: from Sidon to Sukkoth, from Tadmor to Ur-Kasdim, from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, from the mighty Euphrates to the far-stretching desert..."(1)
Ben Gurion further confirmed in the 17th Zionist Congress the plans for the expansion of Zionist imperialism, for he said,
"in Eastern Palestine, there are broader and emptier acres, and Jordan is not necessarily the perpetual limit to our immigration and settlement... without amending the Mandate we are entitled to ask the right to enter and settle Transjordan; its closure in our faces neither accords with the Mandate as it stands, nor considers the crying economic need of a fertile but under-populated and impecunious region." (2)
Emanating from these same imperialist and expansionst ideas, Ben Gurion demanded in a 1954 meeting that included Moshe Sharett and Moshe Dayan, that everything be done to establish a Maronite State in Lebanon, at the initiative and with the military, political and financial assistance of Israel. Moshe Sharett writes in his diary about a meeting, late in the same year, of the senior employees of the Israeli Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, where Ben Gurion reiterated his demand that his plans for Lebanon be implemented, and where Moshe Dayan very enthusiastically declared: "The only thing that's necessary is to find a Lebanese officer, even just a major. We should either win his heart or buy him with money to make him agree to declare himself the savior of the Marionette population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel ... and everything will be all right."(3)
For this purpose Zionist plans foresaw the necessity of igniting a civil war in Lebanon and creating a situation of tension. In a letter from Ben Gurion to Moshe Sharett, dated February 27, 1954, he wrote on the one hand: "in normal times this (the creation of a Maronite state) would be almost impossible ... But at times of confusion, or revolution or civil war, things take on another aspect and even the weak declares himself to be a hero."(4)
On the other hand, the main principles of the Herut Party, which Menachim Begin heads, go beyond Ben Gurion's point of view, which foresees the annexation of "East Palestine" (the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) and calls for its liberation by military force. (5) This was confirmed further by the Herut Party Conference. The declarations of Ariel Sharon, the former Minister of Defense in the Likud government (1982) which call for the establishment of a Palestinian state at the expense of the people, the land and the independence of Jordan (pretending all the time that he is relinquishing a part of the land of Israel as the only solution to the Palestine question) are nothing more than an integral part of Zionist expansionist plans. It is to be expected, therefore, in accordance with these plans, that the 1980's might witness movements in this direction.
It seems that Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, had elaborated a policy for the expansion of the Zionist colonial settlements in the early 1950s, in order to develop the Zionist military outpost, Israel, into a regional power capable of carrying out operations in the service of imperialism. In 1953 he put forward a draft plan for the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, just before Gamal Abdel Nasser took over in Egypt. The invasion was to take place in 1953. On October 26, 1953, Matti Peled, a member of the Israeli secret service, summarized the attitude of the Zionist movement towards the West Bank in front of the Zionist movement in the United States, saying: "One, that the Army considers the present border with Jordan as absolutely unacceptable. Two, that the Army is planning war in order to occupy the rest of Western Eretz Israel. At that time, the Zionist leadership snubbed all Arab efforts to reach a peaceful settlement through direct negotiations. Nahum Goldmann, who headed the World Jewish Congress for more than 30 years, recalls that Ben Gurion refused to negotiate with the Arabs to prevent the 1948 war, and accused his foreign minister Moshe Sharett, who tried to persuade him to reach a peaceful settlement through negotiations, of being against the establishment and declaration of the state of Israel. Moshe Dayan also turned down all attempts by the Egyptian and Jordanian administrations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, respectively, aiming at the elaboration of security arrangements to prevent infiltration, claiming that such an arrangement would "...hamper the movement of Israel," in launching reprisal operations.(6) These operations aimed at the humiliation of Arab governments, the exile of the Palestinians and the imposition of Israel's hegemony and might over the whole area, thus proving to the imperialist powers the effectiveness of this military outpost in keeping the Arabs in place.
The conspiracy, woven consecutively by the three imperialist powers, Great Britain, France and the USA, and which they hid under the mantle of the tripartite declaration of 1951, and their financial, military and economic support, claiming their moral commitment to the Jews and Israel only proves the reality of the link between Israel and these imperialist powers through common aims and interests. This link, forever renewable through illegitimate interests, goes back to 1840, when oil was being discovered, the consuls and ambassadors of Western countries in Jerusalem and Constantinople singled out the Jews among other Ottoman citizens and placed them under their protection. (7) Herzl succeeded in obtaining a guarantee of support from the German Empire in 1898. He wrote in his diaries: "To live under the protection of strong, great, moral, splendidly governed and thoroughly organized Germany is certain to have most salutary effects on the national character of the Jews."(8)
After the German-Ottoman alliance and the refusal by Germany to adopt the Zionist settlement plan, Herzel's interest turned towards British imperialism. In a letter he addressed to Baron de Rothschild, he wrote: "So far, you still have elbow room. May you claim high credit from your government if you strengthen British influences in the Near East by a substantial colonization of our people at the strategic point where Egyptian and Indo-Persian interests converge..."(9)
After Chaim Weizmann took over the Zionist movement in Britain, he wrote a letter to C.P. Scott, Editor-in-Chief of the Manchester Guardian, in November 1914, in which he says "We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within our sphere of influence and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it, and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal."(10)
Herbert Samuel, the British Zionist who later became first British High Commissioner in Palestine, scored a success for the Zionist movement within the British Government. He presented a memorandum to the government in 1914 proposing the creation of a Jewish state. With the help of Great Britain and the USA, he then requested the British government (which had not yet occupied Palestine) to give the Jewish organizations all the facilities required to set up settlements, establish educational and religious institutions, and to open the doors of Palestine to Jewish immigration so that... in the course of time the Jewish inhabitants grew into a majority and settled in the land... the course which is advocated would win for England the gratitude of the Jews, throughout the world. In the United States, where they number about 2,000,000 and in all the other lands where they are scattered they would form a body of opinion [that] would be favorable to the British Empire."(11)
When Arthur Balfour became Britain's Foreign Minister, the Zionist movement scored another success, due not solely to his deep relationship with this movement, but also to the fact of his being one of the architects of European colonialism in Southern Africa. Balfour furthermore managed to do away with the part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement which called for the internationalization of Palestine, in view of committing Britain to agreeing that Jewish settlements be a preliminary fact to the creation of a Jewish state. (12)
The letter which Woodrow Wilson, the president of the USA, addressed to Lloyd George, the British prime minister was the main factor in dispelling any hesitation the British Government might have had regarding its commitment to the creation of a Jewish state. Immediately after the receipt of this letter, Balfour announced his declaration on November, 1917.
American money thus started pouring in to save Jewish settlements from actually suffocating in their cradle. The Zionist leadership succeeded in amassing $10 million from official and public sources in order to finance its plans. It appealed to the supportive Mandatory government, quoting Article 2 of the Mandate law which states: "...That the Mandatory government be responsible for providing the country with the appropriate economic, political and administrative conditions, that would guarantee the creation of a Jewish national homeland," and Article 6 of the same law which reads: "...it is up to the administration in Palestine to encourage, with the cooperation of the Jewish Agency, the gathering of the Jews on government owned lands mentioned in the Article requested for public use." Furthermore, in 1921, the Mandatory government altered the Ottoman law which allowed any citizen to reclaim any land and register it officially in his name without prior permission. The amendment necessitated obtaining previous permission from the Director of Lands, who naturally was a Zionist, with the aim of limiting the exploitation of uncultivated lands by Palestinians and restricting land registration to the Zionist movement. The Mandatory authority issued in 1926 "The Seizure of Land Law" with the intention of seizing Palestinian lands under the pretext of establishing economic projects. Two years later it issued the "Settlement of Land Ownership Rights Law" through which the Mandate authorities were able to seize lands that belonged to Arab tribes and families and hand them over to the Zionist movement. British Zionists who were appointed in the Mandatory government received their orders from the Jewish Agency and implemented these laws. The British went on to hand over entire villages (such as Bar das Hanna in the Haifa region) in accordance with the terror, of the Palestine constitution amended in 1932. It also promulgated the "Forests Law," according to which tens of thousands of dunums of thick forest lands registered in their Palestinian owners' names were expropriated.(13)
In order to serve their aims, the constitution of the Jewish Agency of 1929 stated in its Article 3:
"Land is to be acquired as Jewish property... the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the Jewish National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. The Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor... it shall be deemed to a matter of principle that Jewish labor shall employed..." (14)
In addition to this policy, which even prevented Palestinian peasants from working on the land where they once worked for absentee landlords, the land expert who represented the Jewish Agency at the Shaw Committee in 1929 insisted that 90% of the lands bought up to that date belonged to non-Palestinian absentee owners. (15)
The Mandatory government then went ahead with the implementation of laws which would secure the establishment of a Jewish state. It thus allocated illegally to the Jewish Agency 195,000 dunums of state owned lands and gave the control of most concessionary companies, such as the Palestinian Electricity Company, the Salt Company and the Potash Company to Jewish immigrants. "The joint total capital of these companies accounts for 90% of the total capital of all concessionary companies."(16) This policy had dangerous consequences, for it appeared in 1930 that of the 86,980 Palestinian peasant families, 29.40% owned no lands. (17) The theft of the national heritage, led to the exacerbation of misery, suffering and unemployment, all of which are part of a plan aiming at pushing the Palestinians to emigrate. In his memoirs, Joseph Weitz, who headed the management board of the Jewish National Fund from 1951 to 1972, wrote: "Among ourselves it should be clear that the is no room in this country for the two peoples together." (18) He then advocates that the Palestinians be exiled to neighboring countries.
At the end of 1946, the British authorities estimated Jewish land property to be 81,624,000 dunums, or approximately 6% of the total land area.(19) This means that when the State of Israel was declared, 94% of the total area of Palestine was owned by Palestinians. Palestinian farmers were able to preserve their land--against the odds--from transfer to Zionist colonies.
As regards the population, the General Monthly Review, which the Mandate government published, estimated in its March 31, 1947 issue that the Arab, non-Jewish inhabitants numbered 1,400,000, while the Jews numbered 589,341. This clearly proves that an absolute Arab majority prevailed in Palestine on the eve of the declaration of the State of Israel. The Zionist movement succeeded in increasing the number of settlers from 24,000 in 1882 to 589,341 in 1947, or from 5% to approximately 42% of the total population, thanks to the help and policies of the Mandate government which had as a task the creation of such a majority. This majority, however, had not been achieved when the State of Israel at last became a reality. It was then clear to the Zionist leadership when Britain decided to withdraw, that establishing a state in Palestine as Jewish as England is English could not be achieved as long as a dominant Palestinian majority population owned the majority of the lands of their future state.
The Zionist leadership then doubled its efforts to draw up sinister plans to insure that its colonial expansionist state was created, especially after Britain abandoned the policy it declared in December 1947 advocating the gradual transfer of authority to two provisional, governments, one Palestinian and the other Jewish, according to the partition plan, in favor of a resolution prolonging the period of its mandate over the whole of Palestine till the 15th of May 1948. This new policy was intended to protect the borders of Palestine against any eventual Arab intervention until the Zionist leadership had completed the mobilization of its human and military resources. Furthermore, being a country with imperialist interests, Great Britain aimed at introducing into Palestine a technologically advanced minority of settlers mobilized by a fanatic and highly organized movement. The British also closed their eyes to the secret arming and training undertaken by the settlers, while they brought all their might to bear on preventing the indigenous majority from arming itself, and proceeded to destroy its political leadership.(20) They gave the Zionist gangs unlimited access to their military arsenal and supplied them with firsthand information on their withdrawal plans.
When the time came for the British forces to withdraw, the Zionist leadership had completed the plans it had been working on for more than 80 years. Yigal Yadin, who headed the Haganah Operations, says that the strategic plan was by then ready and contained illustrated details of every Palestinian village and its inhabitants. (21)
The first phase of this strategy was plan "C." It started before the month of March and saw to it that Zionist areas would not fall into Palestinian hands, and that all communication routes were adequately protected. The part of this plan that concerned the Palestinians foresaw a dirty psychological warfare campaign (the Palestinian population was ordered to take cholera and typhus vaccines, as these epidemics, they said, might spread in March and April).(22) It also foresaw raids against peaceful villages where explosive devises were placed around stone houses, petrol-poured over wooden windows and door frames and then lit, and their inhabitants burned to death inside.(23) On March 9, 1948, the Deir Yassin Massacre took place; it preceded the second phase of the operation, Phase "D" which constituted, in effect zero hour, and which started immediately after the British forces withdrew. These operations had the secret code name "Matateh" (the Broom) and foresaw the use of the burned land policy. According to this plan, Zionist gangs blew up and destroyed 473 Palestinian villages and cities after committing massacres against their population, women, old people and children. They often gathered the men in the village mosque and blew it up on them; some were allowed to watch the operation and then allowed to go in order to inform other Palestinian communities of what was going on. At the same time loudspeakers in the streets carried recorded sounds of fear and women's lamentation and then a voice would be heard, as if from the grave, asking people to emigrate: "All you believers, save your souls, escape and save your life, the Jews are using poisoned gas and nuclear weapons. Have pity on your women and children and set out of this bloodbath, for if you stay you would have brought disaster upon yourselves."(24)
In its aggressive war in 1948, Israel occupied an estimated 20,700 square km. comprising nine whole administrative districts and five sub-districts, out of a total of 18 districts inhabited by a majority Palestinian population of approximately 904,000 people, (25) while the number of Jews in Palestine at the time was a mere 589,341 people. (26) After the completion of the Zionist plan, this Palestinian majority dropped to approximately 120,000 to 130,000 people. This resulted in operations of population substitution and expansion of territory unprecedented in history.
Alec Kirkbride, one of the senior architects of British policy in the Middle East recorded in his book his knowledge of a plan to evict the Palestinian population to Transjordan: "... which was (Transjordan) intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine which they were pledged to support, became an accomplished fact.(27)
The "Jewish Chronicle" published on August 13, 1947 a detailed report, unchallenged by any Zionist quarter, about the secret talks that took place between Chaim Weizman and the British Minister of Colonies. The former requested that the "Arab population be transferred" out of Palestine in order to implement the partition plan suggested by Britain the same year.
The Zionist movement paved the way for these evictions and expulsion in the international arena by issuing resolutions calling openly and frankly for the eviction of the Palestinians from their country. Thus the British Labour Party passed a resolution in 1944 to encourage the Arabs "to leave Palestine" while Jews would be encouraged to go there. This was preceded by the Baltimore Conference of 1942 which brought together representatives of both the Republican and Democratic Parties and recommended steps to a similar effect. As soon as the State obtained legal international recognition, the Israeli authorities spared no effort to liquidate the Palestinian minority which Ben Gal, Commander of the Northern Region considered a cancer in the body of the State. (28)
This Palestinian minority was subject to the British emergency rules and regulations of 1945, reissued by the Israeli Defence Minister in 1949 under the pretext of security--Israel's "sacred cow"--which it used, as did other fascist regimes, to carry out its racial terror policy. These rules, for example, give the Israeli military officer the right to enact and execute any laws and policies he deems necessary without giving the Palestinians the right to appeal against them. These involve administrative detention, exile, expropriation and destruction of property, the imposition of individual and collective fines, the banning of free speech and publication, the imposition of house arrests, and defining "security" or "closed zones" where entry to and exit from are strictly prohibited.
The lawyer Yacoub Samson Shapira, who later became legal adviser to the Israeli Government, or prosecutor general, described the laws upon their imposition by the British Government as follows:
"The rule that was established after the publication of the emergency regulations in Palestine has no equivalent anywhere else in the civilized world. Even Nazi Germany had no such laws passed even at the service of Nazism and the like."(29) Thus, armed with these arbitrary laws and operating in the shadow of a racialist military rule that lasted 16 years, from 1949 to 1966, Israel proceeded during this period to assemble the Palestinians in certain villages and considered them "security" or closed zones, ghettoes or Bantustans, out of which the population could not circulate.
In the best South African racialist government style, whole areas stretching for tens of kilometers were considered security zones; the same applied to the Galilee and Triangle areas in the heart of Israel, and the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip and the fourth area, on the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railroad near the village of Batteer.(30) At the same time, hurried mass expulsions were taking place without interruption. On the 4th of February 1949, for example, the Israeli authorities evicted half the inhabitants of the village of Kufr 'Anan and forced them across the Jordanian border. On December 25, 1951, Christmas Day, they blew up the village of Iqrit and evicted its Christian Maronite inhabitants after handing them a notice to vacate their houses in only two weeks. The Israeli authorities then proceeded to confiscate their land estimated at 15,650 dunums. On September 16, 1953, the Israeli Infantry and Air Force attacked the village of Kufr Bar'am and destroyed it completely. After that the whole village area amounting 11,700 dunums, were confiscated.(31) On February 28, seven hundred people were expelled from the village of Kufr Yasseef, and forcibly loaded on trucks and then made to cross the Jordan River. On August 17, 1950, the ten thousand inhabitants of Al-Majdal, a Palestinian textile manufacturing center were also deported.(32) This mass expulsion operation lasted for three weeks.
In October the Bagara tribe was forced to cross over into Syria. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published in its November 3, 1953, and November 1959 issues accounts of some of the expulsion operations involving Palestinian bedouins, carried out by Unit 101 of the Israeli Army, which was headed by the former Israeli Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon during the 1953-1954 period. These operations resulted in the expulsion of a big part of the Azazmeh tribe who were forced to go to the Sinai Desert. Bedouin groups saw Israeli desert vehicles appear in their midst day after day. (33)
"Cannons and automatic weapons were sudden and crippling until finally the children of the desert were destroyed. They gathered their few remaining possessions and led their camels in long silent processions into the heart of the Sinai Desert."
The forcible eviction of these bedouins went on, reaching five different evictions in one year for some tribes. (34) After failing to dislodge the Sawa'ed tribe from their land, the Israelis proceeded to tighten their grip on them. They withdrew their hunting and travel licenses, closed their elementary schools, forbade food supplies from reaching them and prevented them selling their produce outside their area. (35) On September 27, 1950, forty-five houses and all water wells belonging to the Na'im tribe near Shafa 'Amr were destroyed in order to force the population to leave their lands. (36)
In 1950, the Knesset took a decision to turn the "Committee for Arab Rural Property" of 1948 into the "Committee for the Property of Absentees" and appointed a custodian who was considered according to the same Knesset decision the legal owner of all lands and property owned by expelled Palestinians. The custodian was allowed to sell the property only to the "building and development authority" which in turn gave it to the Jewish National Fund, thus becoming the eternal property of the Jewish people, not liable for sale or any other transaction and banning all others, but Jews, from renting or working them.
On the 26th of June 1953, an agreement was signed between the government, the "building and development authority" and the Jewish National Fund (a thief with three faces), to "sell" an estimated 2,373,677 dunums of Palestinian absentee lands to the Fund. Some 15,025,000 dunums were later transferred to it after duly channeling them through other Zionist institutions in order to guarantee the "legality" of the property transfer operation. These lands, and those already owned by the National Fund, were later called "the lands of the nation." Furthermore, and in order to tighten the grip on the Palestinian minority who resisted against the organized massacres, successive Israeli governments issued successive laws with the aim of stealing as much of the land belonging to that minority as possible, thus taking away their means of daily life and existence. In addition to the laws setting up security and closed zones, a new law was issued legalizing the use of abandoned lands and another law "for the requisitions of land in times of emergency 1949." Some of these lands were used to accommodate the new Jewish emigrants on Palestinian lands and in their cities, while others were used to house government institutions. Another new law concerned with the property of "absentee present owners," which considered as absentees thousands of present Palestinians who were supposed to be Israeli citizens. The Israeli authorities must have considered "God an Absentee" when they handed over the property of the Islamic waqf to the custodian of absentee property, who in his turn sold most of this property, including the Moslem cemeteries and some mosques to the Zionist "building and development authority." These lands were estimated to range between 750,000 and 1,100,000 dunums. (37)
Last but not least of the laws to mention is the land seizure law "the law for the acquisition of land (operations and compensation) 1953-1954" which epitomizes all other laws involving confiscation. It also legalizes all seizures that occurred during and after the war by giving the Israeli finance minister full powers to transfer the ownership of seized lands to the Israeli government, in addition to giving him the right to expropriate and seize any piece of land without giving the owners of these lands the right to appeal. This law was compared to the laws promulgated in Spain in the middle ages to seize the property of Jews, or to those of the Nazis in more recent times. (38) The Israeli authorities proceeded according to these laws in 1953-1954 to expropriate 1,225,174 dunums in 291 Palestinian villages (39) and 65% of the lands of 78 (out of 104) other villages.(40) Samuel Toledano, who was then adviser to the prime minister on Arab affairs, declared that the law involved as well the seizure of two million dunums of land belonging to the Nagab bedouins.(41) The battle over these lands incidentally, is still going on until today.
The massacre of Kufr Kassem in 1956 and the harassment of many other Palestinian villages failed to push the Palestinians to emigrate. Thus a new wave of settlements started in the sixties under the slogan "Judaization of the Galilee." To avoid the racial connotation the slogan was officially changed to "development of Galilee." This wave, which is still going on today, aims at depriving the inhabitants of Palestinian cities and villages of their means of livelihood and at tightening the grip on them in order to limit their natural growth and development. Nazareth, capital of west Galilee, was the first victim of this wave for around it there were in 1953 some 51 Arab villages with a population of 84,000 persons, owning 929,549 dunums of land. (42) Between the years 1951-1976, Israel established 250 settlements as part of the 3rd phase of settlements. (43)
Naturally those settlements were built on lands seized from Palestinians and others belonging to the cities and villages remaining after the 1948 war. In spite of all that, the situation of the Palestinians and the natural growth in their numbers increased the worry of the Zionist leaders. Israel Koenig, governor of the northern province (which includes Acre, Nazareth, Tiberias and Safad where the majority of Palestinians live), presented a plan to the Israeli ministry of the interior asking it to pursue a clearly defined and basically racial policy to combat the Palestinian demographic "danger" which threatens the purity of Israel. In his document he writes that the national growth rate of the Arab inhabitants of Israel is approximately 5.9% per annum, while that of the Jewish inhabitants is 1.5% per annum. This problem, he says, is acute, especially in the northern province which includes a large number of the "Arab minority." By mid-1975 the number of these inhabitants in the northern district was approximately 250 thousand persons, while the number of Jews was approximately 289 thousand persons. He adds that if one looks at the various districts, he will see that in eastern Galilee the Arabs constitute 67% of the population, and in "Yisrael" province (Nazareth) they constitute approximately 48% of the population. Koenig indicates that in 1974 the number of Jews grew in the northern province by 759 persons, while the number of Arabs grew by 9,025 persons. According to this ratio of growth, the percentage of Arab inhabitants in the northern district will reach over 51% in 1978. (44)
In the light of these "dangers," which are based on racial perceptions, Koenig suggests to the Israeli government a series of measures aiming at decreasing the number of Arab citizens and increasing the number of Jews. He suggests that obstacles be created to prevent Palestinian students from joining higher educational institutions; instead, they should be encouraged to go abroad and then prevented from returning home. He advises the impoverishment of the Palestinians by barring them from working in factories, imposing high taxes and forbidding them from operating as marketing agents, in addition to strengthening the effectiveness of the police force in Arab areas. Although this racist document was not officially adopted by the Israeli government, the measures and policies practiced by successive Israeli governments are similar to what it suggests.
Furthermore, Palestinian town councils are suffocating from racial discrimination through heavy cuts in their development budgets and other sources of income. Maps of city master plans are not authorized to freeze development of Palestinian cities and towns and to prevent the citizens from building. Even the diminished budgets of the local councils are approved only after half the financial year has elapsed in order to paralyze their work and prevent them from providing the citizens with daily services. (45)
The war of 1967 left the doors wide open for Zionist settlement construction, and the experience that the Israeli authorities gained in stealing and expropriating land since the creation of their state helped them to accelerate the expansion process. The Ma'arakh coalition set forth in 1967 to implement the Greater Israel ideal as embodied in the Alion plan. The plan considers 40% of the West Bank as territory falling within Israel's expansionist settlement projects. It includes the annexation of the Gaza Strip and considers the Jordan Valley an inseparable part of Israel.
Ariel Sharon conducted an experimental eviction operation when he was Military Commander in the Gaza Strip and Moshe Dayan was Minister of Defense. Through this settlement wave, the party in power hoped to bring together the plan of Allon, on the one hand, and those of Dayan, Yisrael Galili and Sharon which embody all the ambitions of the annexation and expansion fanatics, on the other. Another typical development of the period was the appearance of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) whose members believe that Messianic salvation resides in the return of the land of Israel. This racist movement was behind the conditions set by the religious groups, namely not to withdraw from the occupied territories except after general elections are held in return for their participation in the Ma'arakh coalition in 1974. The Labour Party agreed to these conditions, thus putting themselves indirectly on the same footing as the Likud coalition.
A ministerial committee representing the Ministries of Absorption and Emigration, Housing, Defense, Trade and Industry, Agriculture and the Interior was formed in 1972 to organize and plan the relocation of 5 million Israelis in the next 20 years, 1972-1992. (46) This project, according to the president of the Committee (Eliezer Brotzkus), involves the territories occupied in 1967. He wrote in an article that 63,000 persons would settle in the occupied territories in the period covered by the project (except for Jerusalem, which the writer considers to be part of Israel). These form only 1 % of the 5 million due to be reallocated.(47) The Jewish Agency, moreover, plans to settle some 100 to 130 thousand persons during the four coming years, and 1,300,000 in the coming 30 years, according to a study on land acquisition and the development of Arab inhabitants. (48)
The Israeli Labour Party and the Ma'arakh government directed their efforts quickly and comprehensively towards Palestinian Jerusalem immediately after it was occupied and annexed on June 28, 1967. A belt of high fortified buildings was erected around the city, and Arab quarters within it were torn down in their entirety to build new quarters for Jewish settlers. Plans were drawn for the construction of more such belts in the form of built-up hilltops encircling the city of Jerusalem. The main strategic purpose of these plans is the isolation, of Jerusalem, "their eternal capital," from the rest of the West Bank, thus making its inclusion in any future peaceful settlement virtually impossible. The second strategic aim is to stop Palestinian natural expansion and growth on their own lands which Israel expropriated to build these settlement belts. Finally, the Palestinian citizens were confined as a result to ghettoes designed to make them even more depressed and incapable of going on, thus paving the way for their expulsion.
Therefore, the settlement effort of the Labour Party and the Ma'arakh were directed towards the Jordan Valley and the adjoining heights along the eastern border. This took the form of two belts, one composed of agricultural settlements on the Jordan River plain and stretching from south of the Dead Sea to the limits of the West Bank in the north where it meets the 1948 Israeli border. Work on this belt came to an almost total halt during the war of attrition waged from the East Bank, and settlement construction shifted to the Syrian Golan till the eve of the seventies.
The second belt was composed of industrial and agricultural settlements stretching along the mountains overlooking the Jordan Valley, starting in the south at the meeting point with the Jerusalem Jericho road, and going northwards to meet the first belt on the northern borders of Israel and the West Bank.
A third belt was also constructed to cover the projects of Allon, Dayan and Galili and involves the regions of Hebron, the settlement belt of Tulkarm and Qalqilya and the axis of the three villages, entirely destroyed a few days after the 1967 war: (Amwas, Yalo and Beit Nuba).
The strategic aims of these settlement belts can be summarized as follows:
The years during which the Ma'arakh alignment was in power, in particular the second half of 1975, saw an expansionist leap bigger than any since 1967. The settlement sites, except for Jerusalem, increased from 53 to 77 sites. (50)
After Menachem Begin staged his bloodless coup and won his victory over the historic leadership of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel in 1977, a new phase of expansion started. It wasn't necessary anymore to justify the building of settlements to international public opinion by claiming "security" needs as did the Labour Party. Begin and the Likud coalition leaders declared that the West Bank and Gaza were part of the "Liberated Land of Israel" and consequently settling on any and every part of it, including the heart of Palestinian areas, was an absolute right.
The Likud government was not even the least embarrassed when a month after signing the Camp David Accords the Jewish Agency came up in October 1978 with a comprehensive settlement project for "Judea and Samaria" as they called the West Bank. (51)
The Likud started their settlement drive by building a fourth belt of settlements involving the western height of the West Bank, thus barring the natural expansion of the Palestinians westwards towards the territories occupied in 1948. It also built a series of settlements around the Palestinian cities and villages in order to encircle and control security within them, after achieving complete control over their lands and stunting their growth. The Likud also allowed extremist settlers freedom of action inside the cities, as was the case in Hebron.
The severing of all geographical and other contacts between the various Palestinian communities was achieved through the construction of vast new road networks, resulting in the division of the West Bank into isolated separate parts. Settlement blocs were built around Palestinian cities and villages linked to these roads and controlling all strategic junctions. The settlement strategy of the Herut Party which Begin headed, and which leads the Likud coalition, believes in making a fact out of the legend of the historical and godly right of the Jews to serve the political aims of the Zionist movement. They thus saw to it that any future government of Israel would find it impossible to cede any part of the "liberated" West Bank and Gaza to Arab sovereignty. In this manner, all attempts at reaching a peaceful settlement are undermined, and the door remains tightly shut in the face of any negotiations for a just and comprehensive peace settlement while Israel's solution, which aims at a collective Arab concession of defeat, the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and at denying the Palestinians their right of self-determination on their own land, is thus imposed, and the road open for a solution at the expense of neighboring Arab countries.
The other strategic aim of the Likud settlement wave rests on a political basis involving the balance of power within the Zionist establishment. Begin felt that winning an election would not end the role of his strong opponents in Israel's political life and that the battle to end that role is a fight for life or death for him personally and for the principles of Jabotinsky, the creator of the Zionist ideal. It appeared to Begin that the Unified Kibbutz, in particular, and the Moshav movement in general form the political basis on which the Labour Party and Ma'arakh bloc rely upon in all their political fights, and that it was very difficult to compete with them to win over this basis. Thus, Begin and his advisors saw the need to form a political base which would be inspired and guided by his own political attitudes. He consequently allocated phenomenal sums of money to the settlement budget on the West Bank and Gaza and diverted funds from agricultural loans and parts of other budgets to finance the construction of these settlements. These settlements and the ideal of settling on the entire "Land of Israel" would form his own strong political basis and render a severe blow to the hopes of the Labour Party of returning to power one day. (52) In order to build this political basis, military rule was reinforced by a group of fascist officers and civilians, issuing some 1000 laws and military regulations to steal lands and water, and to persecute and oppress the Palestinians in order to prevent them from leading a normal life and consequently force them to emigrate.
The Israeli Government follows the Zionist myth that says the Palestinian people does not exist. This non-existent people which has been struggling for one hundred years to reclaim its usurped land is meanwhile robbed and deprived of its very 'raison d'etre'.
Orders of closure for security reasons or for the construction of military camps for training covered 15% of the privately owned lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (56) The amendment of Jordanian regulations involving the general reorganization of cities and villages of 1966 greatly limited the use of lands by their owners and led to the loss of thousands of dunums bringing the total to 65%. The Israeli government set up groups of experts entrusted with the task of studying the best and easiest ways, means and excuses to expropriate all sorts of Palestinian lands. The Israeli Supreme Court in 1981 approved many of the recommendations made by these groups. (57) That same court had previously ruled in 1972 that Israeli settlers were West Bank citizens thus contravening the Geneva Convention which prohibits civilians belong to the occupying country from living in the occupied territories and equally prevents the expropriation of lands for civilian purposes. (58)
The expansionist wave of settlement building intensified following the declaration of the Reagan plan, which is simply a conciliatory gesture and a cover-up for the role that the United States played in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent occupation of an Arab capital. The announcement of the Reagan plan constituted the 'coup de grace' for Palestinian territories, for the expropriation orders doubled and the settlements expanded. This was accompanied by an increase in oppression, persecution, and collective punishment measures.
Curfews were imposed for weeks on Palestinians to prevent them from expressing their rejection of these measures. During a single year from January 6, 1982 to January 6, 1983, the Israeli authorities imposed seventy-seven curfews on twenty-seven Palestinian towns and twenty-five closures of schools and universities. It also gave way to trading and private investment deals by Israeli companies and individuals who started buying, selling and building lands and houses. The Israeli government, for example, gave permission to an Israeli private company to build a new settlement town east of Qalqilya at a cost of two hundred million dollars.
It becomes possible to imagine the extent of the settlement fever when one learns of the methods through which expropriated lands are distributed, as told by Yousef Goei.(59) He writes that once, while Michael Dekel, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, was undertaking a tour of western "Samaria" (northern part of the West Bank) he turned to Dani Weinman, director of the Anashim Insurance Company and said: "Take this hilltop and plan it," and this is exactly what Dani Weinman did. He hired an architect to plan the settlement, which was later named Nofim, and in November 1982, a ceremony marked the laying of the first stone of the settlement. Attending the ceremony were the families that bought the 250 homes before a single stone was laid. The buyer, or rather investor, pays some 15,000 dollars as a first payment and the rest is covered by government loans and grants easily handled by the investor. The committee in charge of the distribution of expropriated lands plans to allocate half a million dunums to the settlements and to private and governmental development agencies.
In Ma'aleh Adumim (15 kilometers west of Jerusalem) the announcement that apartments are available for sale has attracted mainly young couples who have to pay only two thousand shekels per month (less than $700) to become owners of a three bedroom apartment.
The area expropriated recently, in a single month, was estimated to be one-fifth of the total West Bank area. The expropriated area stretches between Hebron and the Dead Sea. Observers indicate that these expropriations aim at isolating the southeastern mountains which are six to ten kilometers wide in preparation for their annexation to Israel. This operation amounts to the cancellation and expansion of Israel's 1967 borders. (60)
Almost simultaneously, the biggest expropriation and annexation operation was taking place within the territories occupied in 1948, and this gave rise to the biggest popular Conference of Palestinian Arabs which took place in Shafa Amr on February 26, 1983. The representatives to the Conference took the following decisions:
The abrogation of the measures of the Minister of the Interior concerning the annexation of the lands of 20 Arab villages with a population reaching 85 thousand and their area of jurisdiction which counts no more than 60 thousand dunums to the "Misgaf" Regional Council which itself has a population of no more than 2,000. The villages in question are: 1) Eilboun, 2) Deir Hanna, 3) Arraba, 4) Sakhnin, 5) Kawkab, 6) Kafr Manda, 7) Ebieen, 8) Sha'ab 9) Kaboul, 10) Al Ramah, 11) Najaf, 12) Majd al Kurum, 13) Deir al Assad, 14) Yarka, 15) Jadidah, 16) Jules, 17) AI Maker, 18) Fassouta, and 19) Arab al Sawa'ed. The Conference also demands the abrogation of the Minister's measures concerning the isolation of 40 blocs from the lands of Shafa Amr, consisting of 2,400 dunums and their annexation to the "Ya-amiq Yisrael" Regional Conference.
In order to boost the expansionist settlement wave and fulfill the "greater land of Israel" legend, and in continuation of its aggression on the Palestinian people and their future aspirations, and the neighboring countries, the Israeli government approved in the mid-1980's as part of its regional water plans, the construction of the Mediterranean-Dead Sea Canal. And on January 30, 1983, one thousand American Zionists from the Israel Bonds Organization, as founders of the "Two Seas Canal" Project, each paid $1000 thousand. (62) The Israeli Energy Minister announced the beginning of the implementation of the project, which will cost $1.4 billion. Sam Reutreg, President of the "Bonds" project and one of the organizers of the World Zionist Economic Congress 1967-1968, linked the importance of the "Two Seas Canal" project with the "Tennessee Valley Authority" project then said that through this project "Israel can undergo a Rebirth process." He also quotes Begin's words to the "Bonds" presidents' conference: "it is time to fulfill the prophesy of Herzel to dig a canal that would link the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, with the aim of increasing the energy output of the State."(63)
This project of dubious economic feasibility has a special strategic importance. Its main aim probably is to increase the possibilities of building nuclear reactors with water cooling systems in relatively uninhabited areas. The project will also allow Israel to use more expropriated Palestinian lands in the Gaza Strip, the Neqab, and the West Bank. The recent expropriations that took place in Hebron might be connected to the Canal project. This "American" project dashes, furthermore, all the hopes that some still have of reaching a just solution that would give rise to an independent Palestinian state.
In pursuit of the policy of robbing the Palestinians of their means of livelihood, the Israelis turned from land to water to, thus hastening the pace of Arab "voluntary" expulsion and satisfying the need of the settlements to irrigate the expropriated lands. These consume now up to 20% of the West Bank water while the number of their settlers (excluding Jerusalem) does not exceed 2-3% of the population. Reliable estimates indicate that there is a surplus of water in the West Bank of 630-775 million cubic meters per annum and the consumption of the Palestinians on the West Bank is 120 m.cu.m. per annum. Meanwhile, Israel will face a water shortage of 500 per annum in 1985.(64) Thus the Israeli occupation authorities took a series of measures to insure that the West Bank stays Israel's permanent water reservoir, mainly through:
The "Plan of 1974 for Water Supply" also warned that the No. 1 Bardala well would cause partial drying up of water sources supplying the occupied territories. (68) In spite of these warnings the occupation authorities went ahead with the digging and caused the total destruction of some Palestinian citrus plantations, and the total drying up of some Palestinian wells.
In addition to expropriating land and water, the Israeli authorities issued military orders preventing any new developments in the Palestinian agricultural sector. Thus a few days after the West Bank was occupied, Order No. 47 was issued forbidding the export or import of any agricultural products without prior permission, and whoever disobeys that order will be jailed for 3 years or made to pay a fine of 3 thousand dinars, or both.(69) Naturally, the purpose of the law is the protection of Israeli agricultural produce, while keeping the markets of the West Bank and Gaza saturated with highly subsidized Israeli produce in order to cripple the Palestinian farmers (who, at the onset of occupation, accounted for 43% of the population), and turn them into unskilled laborers, therefore, reducing the number of Arab workers in the agricultural sector. In 1981 this decrease reached 26. 3%.(70)
The military authorities issued several laws and orders in order to check agricultural growth, among which are laws Number 588, 596, and 818, and law No. 1015 which forbids the planting of one single fruit bearer tree for both individuals or cooperatives without prior permission from the military governor.(71) Above and beyond this policy which aims at freezing the "status quo" of 1967, if not moving the situation backwards, the amount of water used for irrigation has not increased since 1967, and not a single well has been dug for agricultural purposes (72) in spite of the fact that the water surplus in the West Bank allows for quadrupling the area of irrigated land (73) and in spite of the fact that only 5% of West Bank lands are under irrigation thousand dunums. (74)
In the water sector, racial discrimination reaches its peak. The settlers who number 2-3% of the West Bank population (with the exception of Jerusalem) account for 20% of the total consumption of water in the region. (75) Other sources indicate that Israeli settlements account for some 30% of the total consumption of the area. (76)
Besides the percentage of water consumed by the settlers at the expense of the Palestinian people, the Israelis consider the West Bank to be Israel's main water reservoir. Consequently, plans are drawn up accordingly, in particular depriving the owners of these water sources from their means of livelihood, and putting a limit of 100-200 million cubic meters on their consumption in order to save the remaining water, which amounts to 500-600 million cubic meters for the use of the Zionist settlements in Israel proper and those on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (77) Above and beyond the amount of land expropriated (in the Jordan Valley 80% of the total was expropriated and more than 65% of the total West Bank lands) the danger rests in the outlook of the successive Israeli governments towards the occupied territories, which they consider an indivisible part of Israel with a superficial difference in opinion as to the nature of their link and relationship with Israel.
The danger equally rests in the outlook of the Zionist movement and all its political and military institutions towards the Palestinian people, and the pretence that Palestinians do not exist, which allows Israelis to operate on the basis of the "Present-Absentee" principle, with a view to liquidating the Palestinians as a people with a cause.
The expansionist settlement movements such as the "Gush Emunim," headed by Moshe Levinger, and the "Tehiya" by the Minister of Science and Energy, and the "Kach" organization, headed by Rabbi Meir Kahana, are nothing but the core of the most outspoken Zionist circles who express themselves clearly, without the tactical deceit of others, about the future strategy of the Zionist movement and the Israeli government towards the occupied territories and the Palestinians. If these movements were not so deeply ingrained in the political, social and military life of Israel and in the heart of the World Zionist Movement, they would merely have been odd voices in a reasonable society.(78) The Gush Emunim settlers movement which calls for vengeance and mass expulsions is, like the other above mentioned movements, a huge settlement apparatus running more than 30 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.(79) It is armed and has its own secret squads under the command of high officials within the Israeli Defense Ministry, linked directly to the Office of the Prime Minister.(80)
The close relationship between the Gush Emunim and Yigal Allon, when he was Deputy Prime Minister, and Shimon Peres, when he was Minister of Defense, gave the Gush Emunim the opportunity to build the settlements of Kiryat Arba', near Hebron in the south, and the settlement of 'Ofra in the north. Thus, the Gush Emunim are not different from Peres and Peres is not different from Begin. In a declaration, Peres, the president of the Labour Party said: "No responsible body in Israel would agree to the resolution's demand for dismantling the settlements in the territories." He was commenting on a U.N. Security Council resolution in 1980. Is the document of the Commissioner of the North not a faithful expression of what the Gush Emunim calls for? Is it not similar to the demands formulated by Matityahu Drobles, head of the settlement's department at the Jewish Agency who calls for the establishment of settlements around and within areas inhabited by the "minority", within the context of his report "Skeleton Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria 1979-1983," and to his declaration that "settlement on the entire land of Israel is based on security needs and a historical right? (81)
In 1980, Matityahu Drobles issued a new document,"Settlement in Judea and Samaria, Political Strategy, and Plans," in which he demands that a race against time be undertaken to create facts on the ground in order to confound any Arab understanding of self rule that would include control of the land, and advocates the seizure of state and unused lands for the purpose of settling them. (82) It is natural for the Gush Emunim to shoulder the responsibility to express the Zionist solution to the "Palestine Problem." In their opinion,the present struggle with the Palestinians is a contemporary version of the legendary fight between the Cannanites and the Giants. The Giants' solution was to take revenge by killing every Cannanite man, woman and child. As for the Cannanites, their choices were the following:
In an article published by the Gush Emunim's Department of Information, under the title "The Real-Politik of Our Sages," Dr. Israel Eidad demanded that the Palestinians not be given self rule or any other kind of compassionate solution, but should be expelled. Expulsion during war, he says, is acceptable in a state of war, and until this expulsion operation is launched, life for the Palestinians should be made as miserable as possible on the West Bank and Gaza, to facilitate their emigration.
General Aharon Yariv, previously head of Israeli Intelligence and currently head of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the Tel Aviv University, warned in a lecture he delivered at the Hebrew University that there is a plan among some Zionist circles to seize the opportunity of a state of war to expel 700 to 800 thousand Arabs. Even the means to this end are ready.(83) The settlers' private armies are entrusted with this plan and for this purpose they are armed and equipped with official weaponry with a license to kill Palestinian children who protest against the expropriation of lands by throwing stones at the Israeli settlers. Their duty is, moreover, to organize terror, kidnapping and assassinations.
Furthermore, successive Israeli governments undertook a series of policies to transform the West Bank and Gaza Strip into the world's single biggest market for Israel's goods, with no competition whatsoever and almost completely closed to foreign imports; now, 20% of Israeli exports are marketed in these areas. (84) The occupied territories were deprived of all means of industrial and agricultural development as a result of the military orders which ban the establishment of any industry without the prior approval of the military authorities; in addition, the tax policy the Arabs are subjected to is a sword hanging above the necks of merchants, investors, and most recently also those of professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers. Unreasonable taxation constitutes the most effective means of pushing the people to emigrate. Intelligence elements operating within the Israeli tax system impose phenomenal taxes on the people and ask those concerned either to pay up those impossible sums or leave.
More than 49 % of the labor force on the West Bank works in Israel,(85) is exploited by Israeli employers (86) and is deprived of its right to enjoy health and other insurance benefits. Besides, Israeli labor offices which recruit these laborers do not take the Palestinian labor market into consideration. The seriousness of this problem is felt in the Palestinian agricultural sector which lost its major labor force. Moreover, the military authorities carry out measures of oppression and persecution to provoke the population to hasten their "voluntary" departure; such measures include:
As a result of Israel's above mentioned economic and security policies, the aim of "voluntary" expulsion of the Palestinians was fulfilled. The number of "emigrants" reached 100,000 between 1968 and 1980, which equals half their natural population increase. "In 1983, 83% of the natural increase (20,000) was eliminated by emigration (17,000)." (87)
Some sources estimate that over 160,000 Palestinian citizens were forced to emigrate during the past 10 years.
The annual rate of population increase of the Palestinians in the West Bank also dropped from 2.4% in 1974 to 0.6% in 1981, and in the Gaza Strip and North Sinai from 2.8% to 2.2% in 1981. (88)
At the same time the population of Israel has increased three-fold, and that of the East Bank has quadrupled. (89) The danger of this phenomenon resides in the quality of the emigrants themselves. A big percentage of them are high school and university graduates from the West Bank who constitute the binding agent between the different strata of any community. The reason for this qualitative emigration is due to the lack of sufficient development in the Palestinian economy to absorb the ever increasing number of graduates. Reports indicate that the number of high school dropouts has increased by 50%.(90)
The settlement policy aims to steal land, water and all Palestinian human and natural resources, and to implement an operation of human substitution, the first ever of such dimensions in history, executed by means of carnage and terror and by plunging the Palestinian people into unbearable economic, security and psychological circumstances. This has cost the Zionist movement and the State of Israel, since 1964, 45 billion shekels (in current prices) approximately one billion and 300 million dollars. The Ministry of Housing has paid some 21 billion shekels, approximately 600 million dollars, in addition to what the Ministry of Labour and the settlement branch of the Jewish Agency have spent to prepare the land and install sewage, water, electricity and road system terms.(91)
It is difficult to assess all that has been invested in the settlement operation, due to the diversity of financial sources. Yigal Ation admits, for example, that he helped a group of settlers, before their settlement was officially recognized, with funds from the Ministry of Labour when he was at its head.(92) What further makes a full assessment difficult is the participation of the private sector and the individual contributors after the "ideological" settlement idea failed. As we mentioned above, a settlement would be built in Qalqilya, for example, which would cost a private Israeli company 200 million dollars.
Where do these huge sums of money invested in the settlement operation come from, when Israel is suffering from economic and financial crises, foreign debts, widespread strikes and spreading poverty in its big cities? The Israeli Van Leer answers:
"Apart from armaments, preferential trading conditions, permission for Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to the government of Israel, military aid in general, satellite intelligence and protection by veto at the United Nations (often against direct American interests), the American government has over the last nine years donated to every man, woman and child in Israel some $10,000 U.S. in grants and soft loans."(93)
Gad Yaqoubi, member of the Israeli Labour Party in the Knesset writes:
"... American aid to Israel has amounted to US $23 billion in grants and loans ... and now covers over half our balance of payments deficit."(94)
Elmer Winter, President of the Israeli Economic Development Committee, writes:
"Israel has been and remains the single beneficiary of the United States foreign aid. For the fiscal year of 1982 which began last October, United States aid reached the amount of $2.2 billion. Of that, US $1.46 billion is in foreign military sales credits, including US $550 million in grants, an increase of US $50 million over the previous year. In economic assistance, US $785 million are allocated and the administration wanted two-thirds of this in the form of grants. The Congress increased that sum 100 per cent, which means an additional US $262 million in grant aid. The "memorandum of understanding" between the United States and Israel... has an economic package amounting to US $200 million for Israel." (95)
In addition to all this, Jewish Americans contribute through the "United Jewish Appeal" the sum of US $280 million annually. Irving Bernstein, deputy executive director of this Zionist institution, says: "We don't have anything to do with poverty or welfare. Most of our money goes to immigrant absorption, settlement and Youth Aliya." Then he asks himself where else would Israel get the money necessary for the absorption of emigrants, education of youth and the construction of settlements? From Israel's debt which is at 20 billion dollars while two-thirds of its budget goes for defence purposes and payment of foreign debts. The American people's financial support for Israel through the Jewish Agency accounts for two-thirds of the total support it receives from all over the world, which amounts to between 400 and 500 million dollars per annum. The member of Congress Marvin Dymally raised the question of this aid given at the expense of the American people saying: "95 percent of his district could not justify the large aid package to Israel at a time of high unemployment and budget cuts in America," adding that to make matters worse, Israel has received more loans since 1973 than all of the Black African Continent combined.
In response to pressures from some members of Congress who were trying to link American aid to freezing the settlements in the occupied territories, Nicolas Veliotes, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, declared his rejection of any such link upon the recommendation of Secretary of State George Shultz, in spite of the fact that he considers the settlements to be of "bad faith on the part of Israel." The refusal by the USA to exert any material or moral pressure on Israel to force her to stop the expropriations and the building of settlements is practical proof of the connivance between the USA and Israel, and of American approval of Israeli plans to control the whole area through the occupation of more Arab lands and through the Balkanization of Arab countries into small easily controlled sectarian entities.
Thus, considering its sources of finance and its strategical agreement with the United States, "Greater Israel" has become an American-Zionist joint project, and consequently, this project will never come to an end, except if and when the petrodollars will stop flowing into Israel from Washington. Above and beyond the plans of settling in and around Palestinian cities, and the plans to increase the number of settlers to 100,000 or one million, the Zionist expansion project cannot be separated from the fact of occupation and the problem of getting rid of it.
The presentation of Arab peace initiatives will be in vain if the pressure on the USA is not maintained and the military alternative is not developed.
Those who follow the progress of peace initiatives will find that they were all made to fail by Israel, beginning with the mission of Gunnar Yarring, the international mediator and ending with that of President Reagan, passing by Ben Gurion's refusal to agree to security arrangements between the Arab States and Israel. The fact that the Israeli leadership which actually follows very closely developments on the Arab and Palestinian scenes, has chosen to ignore the developments on the Palestinian scene and the adoption of a peaceful but just settlement policy line by the PLO. This Israeli indifference is not at all a failure on the part of Israeli governments to appreciate the importance of these developments but reflects a negative Israeli reaction which stems from a historical refusal to achieve peace. If the Israeli leadership had the smallest interest in achieving peace for its people, it would have acknowledged the PLO's political line and dealt with it as it should be dealt with for no other Palestinian leadership ever had the courage to present what this leadership has presented and in spite of that, Israel does nothing but ignores it in order to carry on with its expansionist ambition.
Regardless of how much land was already expropriated (65% and 45% in the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively), and how many settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (144 as of June, 1983) which constitute 30% of the Palestinian habitations in the occupied territories of 1967. They will constitute 45% in 1988. And whether they control 90% of the water springs or 100% of all water resources.
Regardless of the monstrosity of these suffocating policies which, still, if they were of a temporary nature and of a passing circumstantial element, the Palestinians would be as lucky as any other European people who lived the tragic experience of Nazi occupation.
But the dilemna of the Palestinians lies behind the philosophical and ideological basis of these Israeli adopted policies which the Israeli governments contemplate as permanent. These policies stem from dogmatic fanaticism incompatible except with a movement rooted in Fascism. This ideology advocates and is based on three premises:
As the leader of international Zionism, before and after the establishment of the Zionist state, the Labour Party is absolutely responsible for laying down the seeds of hatred, which is contrary to the basic spirit of man, and strife and colonization between Palestinians whether Jews, on the one hand, or Christians and Moslems on the other. For never throughout the history of the Middle-East were the Jews discriminated against by Arabs as the Zionists are now discriminating against others.
Maybe somebody will prefer to forget the past and start fresh. The new political platform of the Israeli Labour Party adopted in their latest national conference declares an implied war of genocide against the Palestinians. It states active defence against the PLO in the field of security and in the ideological-political field is a duty on any government in Israel.
On withdrawal it states:
"Israel will insist upon recognized defensible borders which are to be permanent political borders, and she will not return to the borders of June 4, 1967, which constituted temptation to aggression."
On Jerusalem it states:
"United Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty is the capital of the state of Israel." The document denies the right of return to the refugees and promises that Israel will obtain resources to finance refugee rehabilitation.
The resolutions of the Labour's last convention also emphasized the maintenance of settlements and the refusal to dismantle them.
Eventually, the world will be disappointed by the inexorable leaders of the Labour Party as they were by the unpalatable leadership of the Likud.
The United States of America and Israel should recognize that their policies of expansionism and the denial of Palestinian right to self-determination are disastrous for both sides. The Middle East is not a perfect playground for the game of nations to be played upon recklessly. The United States leadership will one day witness the wreckage of their foolish policies.
Material compiled by Rami Nashashibi, June 1996.
Page design by Birzeit Web Team, March 1997.
Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society, Birzeit University, P.O. Box 14, Birzeit, West Bank, Palestine.
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